30 Screenshots That Prove Facebook Marketplace Is An Unhinged But Hilarious Mess

Facebook Marketplace is a great spot to find some cheap second-hand goods. It’s appealing to many sellers because it has a wide reach and is easy to use. The social media aspect of it also makes it easy to connect with potential buyers and answer any questions.

The site also imposesvery few limitson what you can sell, making scrolling through the website feel a lot like a garage sale. And just like in any other garage sale, you are bound to find some weird stuff there.

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Out of all the people and organizations to make that kind of mistake, the one you might least expect to do this is NASA. However, that’s exactly what happened to themback in 2015.

You see, back in 2003, Max Ary, a man who ran Kansas Cosmosphere Museum, was convicted of stealing and selling space objects. The police then seized a bunch of his possessions and sold some of them at an auction for retribution.

This, of course, was not the plan. The government did not want to sell the moondust to the public, especially right after seizing it. They mixed it up with another bag that did not contain any valuable space materials in it. Either way, the listing popped up online on a federal auction site.

Soon enough, Nancy Lee Carlson, a self-admitted Apollo mission fan, came across the bag online. According to her, it was labeled “lunar sample return” which was enough for her to want to get it. Furthermore, no one else showed any interest in it—nobody bid on it for three auctions. So, she bagged the bag for $995 in February 2015.

NASA didn’t catch on to what was happening up until the sample made it back to them. That was because Carlson sent it to them to get it verified. See, she didn’t know which lunar mission it was from, so she wanted to get her facts straight.

While their plea was valid, the US district judge in Kansas couldn’t do much to help NASA. He recognized that the listing was a mistake, but he also admitted that he simply could not reverse the authority of the sale. So, Carlson got her bag back and sold it for 1.8 million dollars.

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However, the story didn’t end there. You see, NASA is just as petty as any of us would be in this situation. They tampered with the bag, taking some of the dust from it before returning it. Carlson didn’t let it slide. She sued them again.

Carlson argued that the tampering affected the price of the bag. It was sold for under 2 million, while initially it was priced between 2 and 4 million dollars. She, once again, won the case and NASA was forced to return five of the six moon dust particles that they removed from the bag. Those later sold for an additional half a million dollars.

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All of this to say that the next time you list something online—make sure you really want to get rid of it. You don’t want to make silly mistakes like NASA did.

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